


your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet

by polyproticamory



Series: Thunder Road [2]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:40:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29360445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyproticamory/pseuds/polyproticamory
Summary: "While I stood staring at the water, Sam had emerged through the rain and fog. He was wearing a raincoat with the hood up and cinched around his face. The legs of his slacks were damp and darkened, his canvas sneakers completely useless in the puddles. He walked up to me, reached out to cup my face. When his thumb brushed the skin near my lashline, I realized I was crying. How he could distinguish tears in the rain is beyond me."Penny goes to college. Sam stays in Pelican Town.
Relationships: Penny/Sam (Stardew Valley)
Series: Thunder Road [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2156757
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet

**Author's Note:**

> I've been on a fic binge ever since I turned in a draft of my thesis, and while there is definitely OTHER work I need to do, I just want to read and write fic all day.
> 
> A few months ago I posted a one-shot Penny/Sam fic, but I can't help but think more about their relationship, and who they were and could have been. Anyway, I'm tagging this "College/University" because most of the fic will be taking place out of the Valley itself. Also, more tags (and pairings!) will show up as I write and post more; I just didn't want them to be spoilery.
> 
> Title from Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road."

My acceptance letter to Zuzu State came on a bad day. Mother was angry, drunk, yelling about my messing up the trailer when I tried to clean, and then the next minute saying that I didn’t help out as much as I should.

“Which is it, mother?” I screamed. “Am I doing too much or not enough?”

“You’re just doing _wrong_!” she screamed back, her cheeks even redder under the rouge she still put on every morning. 

And that stung. For the longest time it had just been us two, and the rest of Pelican Town we held at arms’ length, afraid of their judgment, afraid of what they would say about us, afraid of their truth. My mom was hurting, and inflicted that pain on me. And I believed myself to be too cowardly to stop it, afraid that I was enabling her worst impulses. Though now I know that’s not true—that was _never_ true—at eighteen, that’s what I believed. 

Everything that spring was a tangle of emotions, and the fresh air of the valley did little to cool me down when I stormed out of our trailer. I ran to the river, to the bridge that led to the library, skirting out of sight of the saloon, of the Mayor’s house. When I got to the stone structure I stopped to catch my breath, didn’t even realize that I had been running.

The clouds must have been gathering while I stood on the bridge, looking over the edge at the steady rush of the water, but I didn’t notice. My head was too full of my unhappiness. The words I felt I should have said echoed, rattled me so that my heart still raced in my chest. I felt the first raindrop on my forearm. Then another on the crown of my head, sliding through my hair. 

Then the skies opened up and started pouring, and I took a few half-hearted steps toward the library where I knew I could take shelter under the front eave. But the rain had already soaked me through, and the rough, steel-gray surface of the river drew my attention. It was like the rain hammered the surface of a sheet of metal, violent and angry. I felt angry, too.

“Pen?”

While I stood staring at the water, Sam had emerged through the rain and fog. He was wearing a raincoat with the hood up and cinched around his face. The legs of his slacks were damp and darkened, his canvas sneakers completely useless in the puddles. He walked up to me, reached out to cup my face. When his thumb brushed the skin near my lash line, I realized I was crying. How he could distinguish tears in the rain is beyond me. 

“Come on,” he said, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I huddled close against the slick synthetic fibers of his rain jacket. He took me to his house, opening the door and calling softly for his mother. 

Sam took off his jacket and rolled the hems of his pants up before taking off his shoes and socks. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll get you a towel. Mom?” He looked around to see his mother come through the kitchen doorway. She gasped when she saw me.

“Oh! Penny, you poor thing!”

“Sorry for the mess, Mrs. Richards.”

“Can she borrow some dry clothes?” Sam asked, walking towards his bedroom door. 

“Of course, dear,” Sam’s mom said. “And don’t worry about it, Penny honey. It’s just a little water.”

I ended up staying for dinner, helping Jodi with chopping the vegetables for soup and preparing Vincent’s meal—pureed sweet potato and applesauce, and a can of formula. Sam kept his baby brother occupied, stacking play blocks for the kid to knock down as he crawled. 

The dinner table talk was so banal I felt like crying again. There were no backhanded comments, no grumbling, no undermining. And it made me realize that I loved my mother like I held a grudge—in a way that hurt, that drained me, that felt like I was holding on just so that I could have leverage later. 

Sam’s family was not like that. I know now that they were not without their own hardship. But they had a beautiful home, a dinner table always full, and the luxury of relaxing in their mutual care. They did not need to be reminded that they loved each other, but they liked hearing it anyway. 

I kept it together until Jodi dismissed us from the table, wrangling Sam to help her with the dishes. “You can hang out in my room,” Sam said. “I’ll be there in a bit.”

At that point, Sam and I had been dating for a few months, since that winter. We were the quintessential high school sweethearts according to Maru, and yet I had never been in his room until that day. I was nervous, crossing a literal and figurative threshold.

His room was big—enough for a drum kit, a twin bed, and large bookshelves packed with comic books, graphic novels, and some slim volumes of poetry when I looked at them closer. An entire shelf was dedicated to a row of spiral-bound notebooks, the wires bent and gnarled, but otherwise neatly arranged. The few square feet of wall that wasn’t covered in bookshelves or band posters were painted vibrant royal blue that matched his bedspread.

The rain was letting up, and the days were getting longer as the year lurched towards summertime. I plucked a book off his shelf— _The Great Gatsby_ , which we had read in English class junior year—and started thumbing through it, glancing at his margin notes and the idle doodles from when he would stop paying attention during class. There was a patch of sunlight on his bed, and I sat on it, feeling warmed through, finally, in that gold and blue room. 

Then Sam came in, and he stopped just inside the doorway, looking at me. My hair was drying to a frizz, and I felt exposed to him, fully-covered and bare-faced of makeup

His mother’s voice floated in from the living room. “Door open, Samson.” Sam turned bright red, but he pushed the door as far as it would go, kicked one of his shoes in front of it as a doorstop. 

We didn’t talk much: Sam took up an acoustic guitar and plucked out a melody for a song that came to him while he was mopping floors at Joja, and I skimmed through _The Great Gatsby_ , pausing more on Sam’s handwriting than on the words of the story itself. I remember hating the book, frustrated by the fact that I was meant to care about these people and their consequence-less lives, like that had made them, somehow, consequential. Our English teacher told us that we should all reread the book when we’re in our twenties, and though I understand, now, having done just that, why the book is heralded as such a classic, and I understand its nuance and the shape of it, I still feel that lingering frustration. That question of why _this_ story, and not something else? 

But as a senior in high school, the thin, brittle pages of the paperback with the indentations from Sam’s ballpoint pen carving through the paper were soothing. I let my fingers run over them, felt the calm seep into my fingers. I breathed easier, stretched out on Sam’s bed. And Sam placed his head on my stomach as he strummed aimlessly, chord progressions happening seemingly at random. 

The sun had already set by the time I went home. Sam walked me to the front door, talking about anything, everything. He knew enough about my home life—hell, the whole town knew—but he didn’t ask further, didn’t press me for details. 

When we got closer to the trailer, he pointed at the mailbox. Our mailbox was small, latch-top metal box that didn’t have a flag. A big envelope pushed the flap open, Zuzu State’s logo in the corner. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me sometimes on [Tumblr](https://polyproticamory.tumblr.com/).


End file.
